Russia in Global Affairs

For citation, please use:
Degoev, V.V., 2025. More than the Great Game: The Origins of Anglo-Russian Imperial Rivalry in Eurasia. Russia in Global Affairs, 23(4), pp. 156–173. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-4-156-173

BRITAIN’S BELATED EPIPHANY

The takeover of Crimea, and the establishment of a Russian protectorate over Georgia in 1783 were seen by many in Europe as Russia’s first steps in an all-out onslaught on the Middle East. Next in line would be Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus, and then Persia, India, and even Egypt. The ‘Greek Project’ of Catherine II—called by Rostislav Fadeev a “senseless phantom” and “the fruit of…archaeological dreams of the learned Greek party” (Fadeev, 2005, p. 395)—fueled suspicion of Russian expansionist intentions.

Britain was the most suspicious of all. Concern first crept into the minds of its politicians in the mid-1770s, when they still supported Russia. The British ambassador to Russia, Charles Whitworth, noted with possible apprehension that “the latest conflict betwixt Russia and the Porte most plainly demonstrated how scantily the remainder of Europe was apprised of the strength and resources of that state [Russia]” (Whitworth, 1777, p. 22-23). Suspicion intensified after Britain found itself unable to “tame” Russia directing its allied policy on the continent or drawing on it for mercenaries for use overseas.

In Britain’s plans to maintain the European balance of power, Russia was to shift from one side of the scale to the other depending on British interests.

Although in the 18th century Britain devoted most of its attention to the competition with France, which required support from Russia, its priorities sometimes shifted, necessitating a corresponding redeployment of geopolitical instruments. With the beginning of the American Revolution, the British expected to use Russian troops to suppress the colonists and even invited Catherine to enter a full military alliance, to which the Empress responded with the Declaration of Armed Neutrality (1780).

Britain’s surprise, disappointment and discontent are evident in a letter from the British ambassador to Russia, James Harris, who lamented: Experience, however, shortly made it evident to England what a sandy foundation these hopes were constructed upon. Our supplications for aid were at first disregarded, then refused, and ultimately rejected unceremoniously. Our proposals for an alliance, intended to secure aid in exchange for suitable compensation, met with the same unpropitious fate, and we invariably encountered indifference, coldness, and even worse treatment—where, not without cause, we had anticipated to find, if not overt, at least covert friendship and support” (Markova, 1966, p. 236).   Perhaps the British would have been less bitter if they had stopped to wonder why Russia should pull their chestnuts from the fire thousands of miles away from home, whether for money or otherwise.

Britain long harbored bitter memories of Armed Neutrality. Although the mid-1750s Diplomatic Revolution had pitted Russia (with Austria and France) against Britain (with Prussia), direct Anglo-Russian conflict in the Seven Years’ (Third Silesian) War was minimal. And in the 1750s-1760s, Russia and Austria were primarily concerned with Prussia, and Britain with France: there was no sign of a direct confrontation between St. Petersburg and London. But in 1780, Britain came to see Russia as threatening not a hastily-formed alliance, but Britain’s own interests, at which point the situation changed drastically.

In just a few decades, Russia had acquired territories many times greater than the largest European states, and future expansion would threaten Britain’s economic interests, imperial status, and role as European balancer—since within that balance had arisen a force that would not easily bend and might seek to reshape the balance or destroy it altogether.

At the time, the British feared that, were Russia to take Istanbul and the Straits, it would have the power to either overthrow or control the Ottoman Empire, thus blocking Britain’s access to Persia and India. (In the 17th century, Russia barred British and French transit for trading with Persia, having determined its undesirability. Ottoman Transcaucasia ensured continued acquired access eastward without having to bargain with Russia.) Furthermore, Russian access to the Mediterranean Sea could fatally harm British economic interests there. However far-fetched many of these fears might seem now, they could have seemed real to an 18th-century British observer. In September 1788, Russian diplomats reported on British hostility stemming from fear of Russia’s advance in the Mediterranean (Archive, 1876, pp. 138-140).

However, Britain understood that direct confrontation with Russia would complicate the use of Russia to maintain an advantageous balance of power in Europe. Ambassador Harris proposed feigning a shared sympathy for the romantic idea of expelling the Turks from Europe and recreating the Greek Empire, thereby earning Russia’s gratitude and encouraging it to waste resources in this futile pursuit (Markova, 1966, p. 238).

Yet the idea was not adopted: while attractive in its sophistication, it could play into the hands of Catherine who might herself pretend to believe in the sincerity of the British and act against the Turks more decisively. Indeed, Russia’s takeover of Crimea and protectorate over Eastern Georgia suggested that the Russian Empress had begun to implement the Greek Project (unrealizable as it may have been in the view of Harris and perhaps others).

CURBING RUSSIA BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

The mid-1780s marked the next milestone in the development of the new British perception of Russia. The latter was seen as an increasingly dangerous rival in the East in general, and in Turkey in particular. The Russian threat was widely discussed in Britain, as if it had already materialized and urgent measures were needed to counter it. Moreover, alarmist and Russophobic sentiments came not only from frantic scribblers, but from responsible politicians.

Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, from the parliamentary rostrum and in clandestine meetings, speculated about barbarian Russia’s inexorable spirit of conquest, calling for it to be stopped before it was too late (Markova, 1966, p. 250). (As will be shown below, in 1791, he moved from calls to action, almost leading to an Anglo-Russian war. This could not have happened without the influence of the already mentioned British ambassador to St. Petersburg, Charles Whitworth.)

Russia’s activity in the Caucasus and Persia provoked a nervous reaction. Britain’s ambassador to Constantinople, Robert Ainslie, a favorite of Abdul Hamid I, persuaded the Sultan that the Russians wanted to unite with the Persians for a war with Turkey (Kesselbrenner, 1987, p. 115). The ambassador’s intrigues against Russia’s diplomats were so indecent that they annoyed even those who were by no means sympathetic to Russia. Ainslie advised the Porte on the need to prepare its Black Sea fortresses against Russia (Sbornik, 1885, pp. 176, 199-200) and petitioned London to place the Mediterranean squadron at his disposal. Meanwhile, British officers supported the modernization and training of the Turkish fleet (Sbornik, 1880, pp. 445-446; Sbornik, 1881, pp. 4-5).

In the fall of 1787, Catherine instructed her ambassador in London, Count Semyon Vorontsov, to notify the British Cabinet of her surprise at Ainslie’s hostile actions, which contradicted the Cabinet’s expressed wish for friendship with Russia. When the Cabinet decisively disavowed the diplomat’s behavior, the Empress asked whether it would not be worth recalling such a “disobedient man,” “whom all of Europe sees as a provocateur” (Sbornik, 1880, p. 446; Archive, 1869, p. 473; Archive, 1879, pp. 134-135). But the ambassador remained in his post until 1793.

This eloquent fact was not the sole one to reveal Britain’s attitude towards Russia. In the spring of 1788, Britain ended logistical support for the Russian fleet, depriving it of the ability to operate in the Mediterranean. Yet British military supplies (ships, guns, gunpowder, etc.) continued flowing to Turkey. In response to Russia’s protests, William Pitt replied that he knew nothing about the matter (Archive, 1881, p. 401; Stanislavskaya, 1948, pp. 30-31).

THE FRENCH PLAN FOR EUROPEAN SECURITY

While Britain’s warmongering was unobscured, France’s policy was dictated by its ongoing rivalry with Britain. While London sought to consolidate the results of victory, Paris sought allies to help it overcome the material and reputational damage done by the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Although the American Revolution (1775–1783) was in some sense a French revenge, the tensions with Britain only increased.

The British now hoped to compensate for their own defeat with expansion in Asia. In Europe, they joined the League of German Princes (1785) and created the Anglo-Prussian-Dutch Alliance (1788). The latter was largely directed against the strengthening of Russian influence in the Middle East, although it was also involved (mainly through Prussia) in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s crisis in the early 1790s.

Frightened, France hurried to build a counterweight. This required Russia: France had weakened in the Seven Years’ War, while Russia, on the contrary, gained a firmer foothold in the European system. The French started with a trade agreement in January 1787. (One year earlier, Russia had refused to extend Britain’s commercial preferences, enjoyed since 1766.) Soon thereafter, Versailles invited Catherine to establish “the closest of bonds” (Archive, 1869, pp. 516-517), with which the Russo-Austrian and Franco-Spanish alliances would merge into a Quadruple Alliance.

Having learned of this, British Secretary of State Lord Francis Carmarthen sent a threatening message to Russia.

Catherine was in no hurry to respond to it or to the French proposal. She preferred to wait and see what benefits France really promised and what threat Britain really posed.

In October 1787, Catherine had many questions to answer before taking such a responsible step as concluding an alliance treaty. How much would the anti-British architecture of ‘European security’ cost Russia, and who would benefit from it more? Could France be trusted to suddenly abandon its historical pursuit of an Eastern Barrier[1]? What decent explanations could there be for French studies of the Black Sea’s coastal geography, construction of fortresses for the Ottomans in Ochakov and Anapa, and ‘tourism’ in Crimea and along the Caucasian Line? And what were French officers doing in the Turkish army, which was preparing to fight Russia? (Russkaya starina, 1876, p. 254; Markova, 1966, p. 255).

The strengthening of the Anglo-Prussian alliance forced Catherine to turn a blind eye to the ambiguous behavior of the state seen as most suitable for inclusion in the Austro-Russian alliance and alignment of the European balance of power.

Catherine had to accept the idea of unification with France, although her suspicion towards its policy was as strong as her love for its culture. Meanwhile, Versailles drafted a treaty of alliance, but it would not operate in the cases of a Franco-British war started by France, a Russo-Turkish war, and a Russo-Swedish war (Markova, 1966, p. 255). This was an unambiguous message that France was not abandoning its Eastern Barrier.

Russo-French rapprochement ultimately did not go beyond the trade treaty, which Catherine signed with a heavy heart. Both sides were suspicious of each other. St. Petersburg was apprehensive of signing an unprecedented alliance with a power that had often done dirty tricks to Russia. Paris had its own doubts and was in no hurry to formalize the document. Very soon the French Revolution buried any idea of bilateral or quadruple alliance.

All this left Turkey confident of support from France against Russia. Paris, honoring the legacy of Richelieu, preferred under any circumstances to retain freedom of action in maintaining the European balance and its policy towards the Ottoman Empire, trying not to mix these two problems. This gave the Porte enough determination to challenge Russia.

As for Prussia, it also encouraged Turkey towards war. Prussian diplomats reminded the Sultan of the Russo-Austrian alliance, with which Russia could pressure the Porte. Berlin publicly speculated about why Catherine had made a lavish trip to Crimea in the summer of 1787. Was she preparing for further expansion? Finally, in January 1790, Prussia concluded a military alliance with Turkey against Russia—though it did not hurry to enter the war already underway, suspecting that Turkey was doomed (Stanislavskaya, 1948, pp. 34-35). All this satisfied Prussian interests, distracting Russia from the Polish vector on which Prussia was focused in the early 1790s.

BRITAIN’S POLICY IN THE EAST: AUTHORS AND ACTORS

In 1787, confident of the support of its European allies—Britain, Prussia, and the Netherlands, which in 1788 formed the Triple Alliance against Russia and Austria—Turkey went to war, thinking that it was forestalling Russia’s attack. Perhaps it would have done so in any case, but the allies undoubtedly encouraged it. (The Turks saw a rapprochement between London and Berlin, directed against the anti-Ottoman Russian-Austrian alliance. In 1788, this process ended with the emergence of an Anglo-Prussian counter-alliance, which the Netherlands soon joined.)

Ainslie persuaded the Porte not to agree to peace negotiations under any circumstances, assuring it that Britain had assembled a robust pan-European anti-Russian coalition, which was only waiting for the signal to attack (Stanislavskaya, 1948, p. 38).

The Triple Alliance of Britain, Prussia, and the Netherlands, led by William Pitt, also ignited a Russo-Swedish war, hoping that, between the two wars, Russia would be defeated or at least bogged down without the hope of victory.

Some success in pursuit of this aim was achieved in the spring of 1789, when the British and Prussian envoys to Constantinople (Ainslie and Heinrich Friedrich von Diez) managed to disrupt peace negotiations between the Russo-Austrian alliance and the Turks—which had been mediated by French envoy Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier—with a proposal for an international congress that would force Russia to relinquish its territorial gains (Stanislavskaya, 1948, p. 38).

Yet Russia’s actual and likely imminent military victories threatened to precipitate enormous territorial losses. Britain urged the Porte not to agree to Russian peace terms under any circumstances, encouraging it with reports of a British fleet sent to attack St. Petersburg. The British ambassador there, Charles Whitworth, cited the threat to demand that Russia renounce its territorial claims on Turkey. Catherine, making it pretty clear that it was unacceptable to address a great power in such a tone, responded with sarcasm:  “I know that your Cabinet is determined to expel me from Europe. I hope that at least it will allow me to retire to the City of the Tsar (Constantinople)” (Petrov, 1880, pp. 191-193). She thus touched a sore subject not only for Britain but entire Europe, implying that the Greek Project was still alive. 

Nevertheless, that which inspired the Porte, naturally worried Catherine. During the Russo-Turkish (1787–1791) and Russo-Swedish (1788–1790) wars, she was forced to constantly look back to the north while fighting in the south, and remember the south while fighting in the north. With each passing year, the Empress’s anxiety grew, while her determination to win concessions from Turkey, proportionate to its defeats, waned.

This mood was transmitted to Russia’s diplomats, who had to act based not on Russia’s victories, but on their orders to end the whole thing as soon as possible.

Catherine was driven by a fear of diplomatic isolation, one that intensified when the Triple Alliance (mainly Britain) forced Austria, at the Reichenbach Conference in the mid-summer of 1790, to conclude the Treaty of Sistova with Turkey on terms of ante bellum, and to refrain from militarily assisting Russia in any manner. Pitt thus killed several birds with one stone: the Turks could focus on war with Russia, a new Austro-Prussian conflict was averted, and the European balance of power generally threatened Catherine’s foreign policy plans. In March 1790, Poland was officially included in the anti-Russian system through a treaty with Prussia.

This resembled the initial phase of a grandiose (in some sense, futuristic and prophetic) plan put forward in May 1789 by Britain’s envoy to Berlin, Joseph Ewart, for building a European military-political bloc consisting of Prussia, the League of German Princes, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey, all under British leadership. An ardent opponent of what would later be called splendid isolation, Ewart believed that Britain should move from maintaining a balance of power to establishing its hegemony, through neutralizing its main competitor, Russia. This would be accomplished by encircling Russia with a “federation” of hostile states from the Baltic to the Mediterranean (Horn, 1944, pp. 17-18).

The idea was enthusiastically supported by Britain’s Secretary of State, Francis Carmarthen, and his representatives in Warsaw (Gales), Copenhagen (Elliot), and Stockholm (Liston), who emphasized the federation’s triple purpose: blocking the Muscovite Giant’s path to the west, undermining French trade in the Levant, and ensuring Britain’s reliable communications with India. Ewart saw Britain’s immediate task as forcing Russia to accept the status quo ante bellum. Otherwise, Turkey’s loss of territories on the Black Sea’s northwest coast would have badly harmed Britain’s prestige (Stanislavskaya, 1948, pp. 35-36).

All these thoughts were consonant with what Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Charles Whitworth, had been saying for several years. In May 1790, his hatred for Russia rose to the point of calling for the burning of Russia’s shipyards at Arkhangelsk and the sinking of its fleet at Sevastopol, in order to teach this arrogant court a lesson once and for all (Stanislavskaya, 1948, p. 36).

Unfortunately for Russia, the man with the power to realize these aggressive ideas—Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger—had fallen under the influence of Ewart’s Russophobia. In the fall of 1790, he received from Ewart a report titled “Considerations on the Expediency of Combining Poland, Turkey and One of the Inferior Baltic Powers in the Defensive System of the Allies” (i.e., to the Triple Alliance), which held that all of British foreign policy was at stake (Stanislavskaya, 1948, p. 36).

THE 1791 WAR SCARE AS AN OMEN

The specter of clashing with a European coalition loomed over Russia, forcing it to redeploy forces from the Turkish front to the western border. Yet this did not prevent Russian troops from inflicting defeat after defeat on the enemy. The triumphs of Alexander Suvorov, Pyotr Rumyantsev, and Grigory Potemkin worried European capitals; diplomatic correspondence, the press, and political literature warned of the imminent seizure of Istanbul, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Persia and almost the entire Middle East. After Prince Potemkin took the Black Sea gateway of Ochakov, Pitt seemingly feared the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and decided that the time had come to act. The fleet was feverishly brought to combat readiness, and Pitt declared in Parliament the necessity of curbing Russia’s lust for power and saving Turkey from destruction (Sbornik, 1881, p. 114).

Britain found itself on the verge of war. But the parliamentary opposition, led by the eloquent Charles Fox, criticized the idea of war for Ochakov, a far-away locality the British had never heard of (Sokolov, 2002, pp. 3-22; Degoev, 2022, p. 36). Fox, who was on very good terms with Russia’s Ambassador Semyon Vorontsov, is generally considered a Russophile. But while Vorontsov was an idealistic Anglomaniac, Fox had a personal interest in Russian-British trade. Presumably, this explains his words: “England without Russian friendship will always mean little and will perish with her hostility” (see Archive, 1786, p. 444).

Fox accused the government of first (together with Prussia) inciting the Porte to fight Russia and now demanding that Russia give up its legitimate trophy. Demonstrating an excellent knowledge of geography, Fox explained that the fortress was vital for the Russians, as it guarded the Dnieper’s exit to the Black Sea. But how could the loss of Ochakov and other territories threaten Britain’s peace and advantage? To demand that Catherine refrain from taking compensation for the money spent and for the bloodshed in the war she was forced to wage would be intolerable impudence, Fox concluded. (This speech, which Fox delivered in Parliament in March 1791, was reported to Catherine by Semyon Vorontsov.) (Russian Archive, 1879, pp. 207-208).

Fox appealed not only to Parliament, but also to Britain’s industrial working class, whose well-being depended on trade with Russia. Russia’s ambassador, Semyon Vorontsov, addressed this same public when he explained to the press what the consequences of war with Russia would be, and dispatched lengthy proclamations that raised a wave of popular pacifist rallies (Russian Archive, 1879, pp. 202, 203, 205). All this forced Pitt to backtrack.

This victory of common sense was significantly determined by the French Revolution, which sparked much more fear in London than did Potemkin’s capture of the Dnieper estuary.

Catherine instructed Vorontsov to commission a marble bust of Fox, which she intended to place in her palace next to the great classical rhetoricians Demosthenes and Cicero, in recognition of Fox’s oratory, which had saved Russia and Britain from an “unjust and groundless war.” And for Vorontsov’s “tireless labors and zealous exploits,” the Empress awarded him the Order of St. Vladimir and 6,000 rubles annually (Sbornik, 1881, pp. 114-116). Vorontsov’s hard work had been motivated not only by duty, but also by his Anglophilia, for which reason he was skeptical of Russian expansion southeastward. In his opinion, Russia did not need the Black Sea, Crimea, or Georgia (Archive, 1876, pp. 70, 173-174). Ironically, his son Mikhail would later become governor in Georgia and love it with all his heart, never seeing reason to question its desirability.

The Ochakov affair, although peacefully resolved, heralded the entry of Russia and Britain into a long era of intense imperial rivalry not only in the Middle East, but throughout Eurasia, subsequently termed the Great Game.

While war was averted in 1791, there remained the attitude among the British that, as Ambassador Whitworth put it: “If we cannot deem the Russians friends, then surely it behooves us to diminish their strength as our foes to the utmost of our power… Russia must be driven back to her rightful station” (Gerhard, 1933, pp. 321-322). Britain’s immediate interest required stopping the success of Russia in the south, including through proxy warfare and measures against Russia’s Black Sea trade (Markova, 1966, p. 256).

Although Russia and Britain were not the main rivals of one another, their actions at the end of the 18th century were interdependent. Having become a significant element of the European system, Russia could not ignore others’ positions or be ignored by them.

In the 18th century, Britain was initially more a trading partner of Russia and a friend of Russia’s Austrian ally. However, it gradually became more hostile (e.g., in the Northern War and Seven Years’ War), while remaining primarily concerned with France. Russia’s independent policy during the American Revolution, and its successes against the Turks, raised Russia’s status to that of an adversary threatening British interests on the continent. (Although the Ottomans were traditionally part of France’s Eastern Barrier, Britain was frightened by the prospect of Russia’s transformation into a dominant Mediterranean power, however unlikely this might have been after the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca.)

However, not all of the British political class accepted Russia’s demonization. Charles Fox’s speech proves the rationality of at least some. At the same time, memories of William Pitt’s hostility were bound to lastingly change Russian perceptions of London’s foreign policy.[2]

Pitt’s approach is just one of the many factors that contributed to the start of the Great Game. The difference in Russian and British politicians’ foreign policy thinking and their view on the role of various Eurasian regions (the Black Sea, and later the Caucasus and Central Asia) in relations between great empires also played a role. It is precisely this combination of factors that we should analyze, looking for the origins of the Great Game.

THE LEGACY OF THE 18TH CENTURY

The Great Game began in the late 18th century with the above-mentioned fundamental contours of British policy, which first manifested in the war scare of 1791 (which truly could have led to war, as indicated by Catherine’s almost panicked reaction, among other things.) After the Ochakov crisis, Britain moved from a reactive policy to a long-term strategy of support for the Ottoman Empire’s integrity versus Russia (which continued to entertain the Greek Project in the plans of Foreign Minister Fyodor Rostopchin, under Emperor Paul I, to split the Ottoman Empire with France). The Ottoman Empire and its territorial integrity were not an end in themselves, but a means of containing Russia.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the chessboard of the Great Game expanded to the East to include the Caucasus, which was increasingly important given its central position in the Black-Caspian Sea region.

The British directly or indirectly participated in two Russo-Persian Wars (1804–1813, 1826–1828) and in the Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829) under the pretext of protecting the Caucasus’s ‘gateway to India’ from Russia. (For instance, following the conclusion of the Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1812, British officers supported the army of Fath-Ali Shah and his son Abbas Mirza against Russia at the Battle of Aslanduz in the fall of 1812.) France also became an active player in this region. It had its own interests in Turkey and Persia, which it was determined to resolutely defend from both Russia and Britain (Degoev and Stamova, 2013).

The middle of the 19th century saw the culmination of Russo-British competition in the Caucasus, leading to another war scare in 1837. British agents in the North-West Caucasus organized and participated in operations against the Russian army. They sought to ​​create a Circassian state that would be a British vassal and would block Russia’s path to Persia and India—although publicly Britain claimed to be driven by the humanistic goal of civilizing the Caucasian peoples and winning them independence (Degoev, 2009).

Anglo-Russian tensions eventually led to the Crimean War, in which the British, French, and Turks sought, inter alia, to oust Russia from the Caucasus, including through the use of sophisticated propaganda against the local population. This did much to ensure that the Caucasus War would drag on for another several decades.

British actions in the Caucasus in 1854-1855 presaged the expansion of the Great Game’s geography even further east, into Central Asia. (Which ended up almost entirely conflated with the Great Game due to the term’s coiner, British intelligence officer and writer Arthur Conolly.) Although the events in which he participated, and to which he was referring—in Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand of the 1830s—were only the beginning of the Great Game in Central Asia.) Initially, the British lost there, badly. Their agents—Conolly, Charles Stoddart, and Alexander Burnes—were killed, notwithstanding efforts by the ‘damn Russians’ to save them.

In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Russia and Britain came close to clashing in Central Asia several times. And during the Great Eastern Crisis of the 1870s, the Caucasus again loomed as a potential front in the Great Game, though ultimately Britain did not undertake a repeat of the Crimean War (Seton-Watson, 1962, pp. 99, 193, 217-218, 240-241, 419, 423).

*  *  *

Why did a seemingly simple metaphor, the Great Game—discovered by chance in a letter by Conolly after his death—become synonymous for a huge and complex geopolitical phenomenon that historians, politicians, and publicists have studied incessantly for almost two centuries, occasionally proposing new interpretations? Because the phenomenon deserves such a grand moniker due to its influence: on international relations of the long 19th century; on basic foreign policy ideas and public mindsets; and on governments learning at least something from the past.

Yet exaggerating the Great Game’s role in world history, raising it up to a supra-temporal phenomenon, is not productive.

The Great Game per se ended in 1907. The term can be applied to other instances only as a metaphor, not as an academic term. Soviet historians avoided it not only because their Western colleagues overused it, but because it should not be projected onto modern international relations in general or Russo-Western relations in particular. It would be even more incorrect to draw direct parallels to the present or draw conclusions therefrom.

The list of great powers is now almost completely different. The practice of foreign policy has also changed, partly due to the new actors (who bring their own ideological and doctrinal traditions), partly due to competition’s expansion (geographic and otherwise).

Britain’s imperial resources have long been exhausted. The role that it today tries to play out of habit—including the use of Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia—is supported by nothing other than its status as a junior partner of the U.S., which it greatly surpasses in Russophobia and in determination to enact that Russophobia by proxy. Britain may still be able to harm Moscow in various ways, but not enough to meaningfully turn the military-political situation in its favor.

Those who were once the objects of international politics have become subjects, albeit limited ones, and this radically changes the whole landscape. The Great Game’s repetition is a dubious concept, even if the qualifier ‘new’ is attached to the term (Allakhverdiev, 2009; Mikhalev, 2019).

Some have lent the Great Game—‘old’ (Gillard, 1977; Ingram, 1979) and ‘new’ (Egiazarian, 2013)—an academic appearance by positioning it within the core-periphery theory. But the core of the Great Game was constantly wandering and changing places with the periphery. Initially, the core was not in Central Asia at all, but between the Black and Caspian Seas. There was a huge continuous space of geopolitical tension, associated with the Eastern and Caucasian questions. Only after the Crimean War did this space really expand eastward. The Great Game’s geography was broader than traditionally recognized.

The number of players in the Game requires clarification. It was far from limited to Russia and Britain. Without others (France, Turkey, Persia, and the potentates of Central Asia and the Caucasus), it would have been neither great, nor much of a game. Yet secondary actors’ role is often ignored (Lisitsina, 2008; Kuraev, Myanikina, Baranova, 2023).

To summarize, we note that investigating the Great Game’s origin leads to a reconceptualization of its spatial and temporal boundaries. The Anglo-Russian imperial confrontation extended over a much larger space than classical historiography was inclined to recognize, and this entails an enlargement of the list of players. Partly, the Great Game’s expansive scope was a product of its connection to the Eastern, Russian, and Caucasian questions, the boundaries and essence of which are not as settled as might seem to be the case, and which will remain a matter of academic debate for years to come.